14 March 2007: Cleanup continues
First good thing of the morning: he was in a room in the TICU, which meant there were actual visiting hours, and that we could go see him. This began our daily routine: visit at 9am, 1pm, 5pm, and 9pm. Either wait in the critical care waiting room, or back at the hotel in between visits depending on what was going on, and whether or not we were waiting for news or to talk to someone.
He looked better - still scary, but on oxygen rather than a ventillator. Just the removal of the breathing tubes made the whole thing easier to deal with. Dad mentioned that his shoulders were sore - he thinks he may have re-dislocated his right shoulder (which he's done many times), as it felt the same way it did after the last time.
He also had his first sponge bath! He mentioned that the nurses attending to him (not the ones taking care of him on day shift) were all quite cute. Ruth suggested he start interposing the image of that sponge bath into his second-by-second replay of the accident.
We brought Dad a little DayPack for the hospital with a toothbrush, toothpaste, a little listerine-spray thing, his glasses, and a cheap CD player so he could listen to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (a book he has listened to so many times that it doesn't matter if he falls asleep through parts of it), and some cards. Before we left the last visit, we set him up with the first disk of the book, and watched him settle in for a good listen.
We managed to talk to a surgeon that day at some point which was informative. We did learn some new things:
* Apparently, when this kind of traumatic injury occurs, the muscle/tissue can have a delay before it responds to the traumatic incident. So, while the muscle looked healthy, they were closely monitoring him and the tissue to ensure that it remained healthy.
* Debridement is a new vocabulary word. They (the surgeons in the trauma unit at The Med) planned to take Dad into the OR for debridement (removal of dead/damaged/infected tissue) every day if they could manage it.
Ruthie and I wrote a note to the Trauma surgeons that we wanted to add to the chart - when we showed it to Vangie (his night nurse), we figured out we'd spelled something wrong. Perfectionists that we are, we had to fix it. Vangie got a kick out of it (I think, anyway.. ).
The Roster:
* Bonnie, Jenny, Ruth, Erin, Chris, Rodney
Visitors:
* Chet, from the plant in Grenada, came in for the 1pm visit, and hung around with us for a little while afterwards. I really don't think he knew what to do with us...
My email update from that day:
He looked better - still scary, but on oxygen rather than a ventillator. Just the removal of the breathing tubes made the whole thing easier to deal with. Dad mentioned that his shoulders were sore - he thinks he may have re-dislocated his right shoulder (which he's done many times), as it felt the same way it did after the last time.
He also had his first sponge bath! He mentioned that the nurses attending to him (not the ones taking care of him on day shift) were all quite cute. Ruth suggested he start interposing the image of that sponge bath into his second-by-second replay of the accident.
We brought Dad a little DayPack for the hospital with a toothbrush, toothpaste, a little listerine-spray thing, his glasses, and a cheap CD player so he could listen to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (a book he has listened to so many times that it doesn't matter if he falls asleep through parts of it), and some cards. Before we left the last visit, we set him up with the first disk of the book, and watched him settle in for a good listen.
We managed to talk to a surgeon that day at some point which was informative. We did learn some new things:
* Apparently, when this kind of traumatic injury occurs, the muscle/tissue can have a delay before it responds to the traumatic incident. So, while the muscle looked healthy, they were closely monitoring him and the tissue to ensure that it remained healthy.
* Debridement is a new vocabulary word. They (the surgeons in the trauma unit at The Med) planned to take Dad into the OR for debridement (removal of dead/damaged/infected tissue) every day if they could manage it.
Ruthie and I wrote a note to the Trauma surgeons that we wanted to add to the chart - when we showed it to Vangie (his night nurse), we figured out we'd spelled something wrong. Perfectionists that we are, we had to fix it. Vangie got a kick out of it (I think, anyway.. ).
The Roster:
* Bonnie, Jenny, Ruth, Erin, Chris, Rodney
Visitors:
* Chet, from the plant in Grenada, came in for the 1pm visit, and hung around with us for a little while afterwards. I really don't think he knew what to do with us...
My email update from that day:
We got to see him this morning, and *may* be able to see him again a little after 1 (central time). He was awake, and remembered exactly what happened, and was pretty sheepish about it - I think he's pretty upset but was putting on the brave face. But he was alert, and while weak and pretty tired, he sounded good. I feel much better after seeing him - last night with all the tubes and stuff was pretty terrifying.
He'll be having daily surgeries so they can check out the leg and make sure the tissue is staying healthy.
more later. *hugs*
